August 3, 2010

Purslane recipes

I'd had a nibble in the garden when I first figured out what it was, but that was it. Since purslane is the highest source of Omega-3 fatty acids of any green vegetable, and since I had a bumper crop of it in my unkempt garden, I wanted to find a way to get it onto the family dinner plates.

I combined the leaves and some of the tender, topmost stems with fresh apricots, cherry tomatoes and goat cheese to make a salad. I dressed it with a vinaigrette made with lemon juice, olive oil, honey and finely minced candied ginger.

Even the kids ate it up.

I got the idea for that from Brooklyn chef Ethan Kostbar, who described "a summer salad of purslane" in a New York Times story a few years ago. He combined the leaves -- no stems -- with "nectarines, red onions, boucheron goat cheese, burnet leaves and heirloom tomatoes, dressed in a ginger and honey vinaigrette."

If you're looking for other ways to get the green into your diet, there are more purslane recipes at Prairieland Community Supported Agriculture's website. They include potato salads, lamb stew, Mexican pork stew and a salad with cucumber and yogurt.

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About this blog

Richard Gorelick was appointed The Baltimore Sun's restaurant critic in September 2010. Before joining the paper staff fulltime, he contributed freelance criticism and features articles about food to area and regional publications. Along the way, he dispatched for short-distance trucking companies, shilled for cultural non-profits, and assisted in cognitive neurology research – never the subject, always the control.

He takes restaurants seriously but not himself, and his favorite restaurant is the one you love, too.